Congo

LONDON- After the Congo peace agreement, nothing but an eerie silence. Will they? Won’t they? President Bill Clinton made a post Kosovo speech only a few weeks ago promising immediate U.S. intervention the next time lives are at risk. Yet the silence continues. Mention the word Congo and whether it be in Washington, London or Paris, you can hear a pin drop. Is Washington now prepared to turn the clock back to where it was before the 1993 Somalia debacle when in the flush of good feeling following the end of the Cold War UN peackeeping was not only to be given a new lease of life and a rush of new mandates but more robust guidelines for military engagement? It was all dramatically undermined by a great American panic after 18 U.S. rangers were killed in a firestorm of guerrilla bullets in Somalia. Today it is not so much a...

LONDON – When the United Nations pulled its troops out of the Congo in June 1964 Secretary General U Thant reported “The UN cannot permanently protect the Congo from internal tensions and disturbances created by its own organic growth towards unity and nationhood”. That was some kind of relief after a peacekeeping operation that nearly tore apart the UN and claimed the life of U Thant’s predecessor, Dag Hammerskjold. Yet the UN did bring a measure of peace to the Congo in the sense that it ended a civil war fought over the succession of the mineral rich province of Katanga and provided an alternative to what was in danger of becoming an East-West grab for influence that threatened to turn the Congo into a major Cold War battleground. Once again the Congo has become a maelstrom. Susan Rice, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Africa, warns that the fighting...

LONDON– Let’s imagine what post-Mobutu Congo could become. It has diamonds, copper and gold. It has rain and sunshine in abundance. It is not, given its immense size, overpopulated. It has wise political leadership, a stable democracy, economic and financial discipline and good governance. It is the heart of Africa, not Conrad’s “The Heart of Darkness.” In a word it is not the Congo it is Botswana which, bar the rain (Botswana is a desert country), could be the Congo’s twin. Botswana in the 1960s was one of the poorest African countries, far poorer than the Congo. Today it is a prosperous middle-income country. During the 1970s it grew at a world record breaking 16% a year and in the 1980s a handsome 11%. in the 1990s it suffered a few bumps when it was blighted by the worst drought of the century and the diamond market hit the floor. (Diamonds...